As a platform that enables borderless remittance for individuals and businesses, international expansion has always been a crucial element in how Wise operates.

Formerly known as TransferWise, the London-based company aims to solve the problems of high fees and currency mark-ups on foreign exchange transaction by building a platform that provides “instant, convenient, transparent and eventually free” international remittance. Launched in 2011, it has also expanded to include other products such as a companion debit card and a multi-currency account.

According to Venkatesh Saha, Head, Asia-Pacific Expansion at Wise, the company thinks of international expansion in two dimensions: Launching in new markets where there are demands for its services and bringing new features to existing markets.

“Bringing Wise to new markets means getting appropriately licensed since we are a provider of financial services. How do we choose which markets to prioritise? We simply ask our customers – if we do not currently serve a market where they are based, we ask them to come to our website and leave a ‘wish’. The currency route with the highest number of wishers automatically moves to the top of the list,” he explains in an email to e27.

In the Asia Pacific, where Wise leads its expansion from its hub office in Singapore, the company has launched remittance product in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia, as well as new features (such as the account and debit card) in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. It also has a number of corporate and SME clients using its services, including their infrastructure Wise Platform.

In this edition of deep dive series, Saha reveals how the company is creating its international expansion plan, the challenges that it has faced along the way, and what lessons can be learned from it.

You will learn about:

– International expansion 101: Key principles and steps
– On working with regulators
– Final thoughts on international expansion

Also Read: In brief: Beenext backs Indian startup YAP, Grab co-founder joins Wise board

International expansion 101: Key principles and steps

Before a company can plan their international expansion, first and foremost, they need to find out where the demands are. The only way to do this is by listening closely to what the customers want.

“We continually review where our customer demand is the highest and focus on those markets. For example, sending money from Indonesia and Malaysia had been our top most-requested currency routes in the region and we were excited to launch international money transfers for these customers,” Saha says.

The next step is figuring out the customers’ local needs, a process that is especially crucial in an incredibly diverse market such as Southeast Asia. While Wise’s user experience and brand identity remain “largely the same” in all of its markets, there are some adjustments that the company had to make.

“Taking on this local lens has allowed us to communicate, address and develop locally-relevant solutions that make a real impact on customers’ lives. Making the service available in Bahasa Indonesia to cater to our customers in Indonesia, integrating with MyInfo in Singapore to offer a seamless digital onboarding experience or providing access to POLi, a popular way to fund remittances in Australia, are some examples of tailored services in APAC,” Saha elaborates.

“Building locally-relevant solutions is a significant investment that involves multiple teams from product, expansion and engineering to operations, and even design and marketing,” he stresses.

Once these steps are covered, the next step that Wise takes is customer education. Interestingly, according to Saha, many of their customers are not even aware that they are not well-served when it comes to foreign exchange.

“Too often, fees are hidden and non-transparent when it comes to transaction fees or exchange rate markups. How this works: providers will offer a relatively low or zero upfront transaction fee, but mark up the exchange rate instead, which means customers pay more than they should due to the unfriendly rate whether it’s transferring money abroad, making international payments or changing money from one currency to another,” he explains.

This is the part where product marketing teams will play a crucial role.

“One example of how we do this is by offering a comparison with other leading players in a given market on our home page. This way, consumers can see for themselves how much our service costs compared to other players and choose wisely — if a competitor has a better deal, we don’t hide it,” Saha says.

Also Read: WISE AI secures pre-Series A from Sun SEA Capital to bankroll the expansion of its eKYC platform in the region

One thing that must never be ignored when launching a product or service in a new market is the evaluation process. According to Saha, having a company culture that celebrates success and failure in equal measure is a “privilege” that aids the process.

“Our products are not static — even after a successful launch, we are constantly trying to improve the product and the customer journey. For instance: Can we drop prices even lower? Can we make customer onboarding more seamless? Can we make the payments move faster? We set these KPIs well before launch and measure our progress towards them every quarter,” Saha says.

“If we identify a misstep, the team that worked on that project gets together, does a retrospective of what happened and then shares their learnings with the entire company. An example could be if we missed a launch deadline or if we underestimated local regulatory complexity. This allows other teams to learn from the experience and helps them apply these learnings to other contexts.”

On working with regulators

For fintech startups, part of the challenge in introducing its products is making sure that it is able to make a difference in customers’ life –while being compliant with regulation. The challenge gets more complicated when they are introducing the product into a new market.

Saha gives an example by comparing the European and Southeast Asian markets. In Europe, a single license can be used across multiple countries, but in Southeast Asia, each country has their own requirements that companies must fulfil.

“As part of our commitment to new markets, we often open local offices to lay the groundwork and drive growth. Hiring and onboarding new team members who will be responsible for launching and building on the initial momentum is not easy. We have to ensure that we find colleagues who understand our mission, serve as the bridge to the local regulators and ecosystem and can be advocates for Wise in their respective markets,” he says.

For Wise, the key in working with regulators is openness while keeping in mind that the regulators’ job is to keep their citizens’ money safe.

“… takes time and multiple conversations before they can build that trust and get comfortable, especially if it is an innovative business model like ours. As one regulator told me after a multi-year licensing process, ‘This is a marriage, we will supervise you for as long as you offer services in our country’!” Saha points out.

Also Read: Being level-headed, judicious and open key to making wise investment decisions

It is also important to see this relationship-building as an ongoing process that does not stop with the licensing.

“We see these relationships as an ongoing process where we continue having open conversations with regulators to make our product faster, cheaper and more convenient for customers. For example, when we first launched in Singapore in 2016, all our customers needed to come to our office in person for verification. Having stayed and continued to build in the market over the past few years and working with the regulator, we were eventually able to offer an instant onboarding experience to our customers in Singapore, through our direct integration with MyInfo, the national database,” Saha stresses.

A final thought on international expansion

After laying down the principles and steps that Wise takes to execute its international expansion, we drive the conversation into understanding the common mistakes that business makes when planning theirs –and what Wise has learned about it.

Saha believes that international expansion should be seen as a marathon instead of a sprint.

“Every business wants to grow, launch new markets and get its product into the hands of new customers as quickly as possible, but this should never come at the expense of business sustainability. As such, we are disciplined about where and what we’re spending on, and its impact on the mission which includes making the hard decisions on which country to go to next,” he says.

For Wise, they implement a principle of zero cross-subsidisation in supporting their international expansion.

“We don’t want customers from one country to be cross-subsidising customers in another or have one product cross-subsidising another. This is not only unfair to your customers but it’s also dangerous 一 what if one day customers stop using that ‘money maker’ product? Your entire business could unravel. For these reasons, we want to ensure that each product, feature and market stands alone as sustainable. In order to do so, we spend that extra bit of time to understand each regulator and market’s concerns as well as explore ways to lower our costs before we are comfortable launching publicly,” Saha explains.

In short, the lessons in international expansion can be divided into three parts:

1. Being laser-focused on the mission

“In a fast-paced environment and industry like ours, it can be tricky deciding what to prioritise when everything feels important. Here, our mission charts the course for us and combining this with the need for long term business sustainability has made us more aware of what we’re spending, where, and why we’re doing it. If something doesn’t serve the mission, no matter how shiny, it’s gone.”

2. Having a strong local market knowledge

“When you’re committed to expansion, it’s equally important to have a physical presence in the market or be as close to the market as possible. This enables us to work smoothly with local partners and regulators.”

3. Attracting and retaining the right talent

“This means that beyond having the ability to do the job, we look for people who are passionate about learning new things, and truly enthusiastic about making a difference for our customers and on our mission. Once we find them, the onus is on us to onboard them and give them the tools to be successful at Wise.”

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Image Credit: Wise

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Endowus, a Singapore-based investment platform, has raised S$23 million (US$17 million) in a Series A funding round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Softbank Ventures Asia, the global early-stage venture arm of SoftBank Group, also participated.

The fresh funds will fuel the company’s expansion plan in Asia, starting with Hong Kong. This is the first external fundraise by the company, which to date had been bootstrapped by its employees hailing from companies, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and UBS.

Launched in 2019, Endowus offers retail, accredited, and institutional investors a platform to invest cash, Central Provident Fund (CPF) and Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) savings. Endowus claims it provides access to expert personalised advice and “best-in-class” funds at a lower cost with no sales fees and a complete trailer fee rebate.

Endowus noted it has experienced 20X growth in clients investing on the platform, with an eightfold increase in assets under advice.

As per a statement, it is on track to hit its target of S$1 billion (US$743 million) in assets under advice by Q2 2021, just over 18 months after its full-service launch.

Riding on the increased preference for impact investing, Endowus also recently launched sustainable ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) investment portfolios for retail investors in Singapore.

Also Read: What do I need to know as a first-time impact investor?

“Endowus will use the additional resources and the support of our VC partners to go deeper and broader in the Asia market where we want to continue helping all investors achieve their investment goals. We began “Day 1” with the mission to solve the greatest challenges and problems of wealth and finance such as retirement adequacy,” said Samuel Rhee, founding partner and chairman of Endowus.

“As the first-and-only CPF digital advisor and now the fastest growing digital wealth platform in Singapore, Endowus is achieving that goal and the new fundraising will help us bring that mission of the company and vision of the future into reality for all Singapore-based investors,” he added.

“The success we’ve seen in Singapore this past year proves that our solutions are meeting the needs of investors, with one in two clients acquired on our platform investing across multiple wealth streams. And with the same rigour, we will expand our offerings to other key markets in the region, starting with Hong Kong,” said Gregory Van, founding partner and CEO of Endowus.

“Endowus’s mission is to solve saving and investing for individual investors and meet global retirement challenges aligned with our understanding of what was needed in the market. Their innovative business model, ambition and commitment to a higher standard of fiduciary duty speaks of a team that is at the cutting edge of the fintech space,” noted Harsha Kumar, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

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Image Credit: Endowus

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YJ Capital (YJC), a subsidiary of Z Holdings Corporation, has announced a merger with LINE Ventures to form Z Venture Capital Corporation (ZVC).

By joining forces, ZVC looks to launch a JPY$30-billion (US$271 million) “ZVC 1 Investment Partnership” fund that will focus on opportunities in Japan, Southeast Asia, South Korea, the US, and China.

“Today, the CVCs (corporate venture capital) of Yahoo! JAPAN, and LINE have become one,” Shinichiro Hori, CEO of ZVC, said. “By providing growth capital to startup companies and access to ZHD’s ecosystem, we look forward to working together with companies to evolve our services and make tomorrow’s society better.”

For global investments, ZVC will adopt a sector-agnostic approach but with a strategic focus on sectors like consumer internet, e-commerce, fintech, and O2O mobility.

Also Read: Asia Partners maiden fund hits final close at US$384M

At the same time, in advanced markets like the US, the VC firm will analyse the fields of AI, robotics, deep-tech, and blockchain. It will provide startups with global expansion support, product implementation/marketing support, partnership opportunities, and knowledge-sharing opportunities.

Z Holdings, itself a joint venture between SoftBank and Yahoo!, is one of Japan’s largest internet service companies.

LINE Ventures is the CVC arm of Line Corporation, the creator of the mobile messaging app LINE. It focuses on providing funding, industry knowledge, and operational support to its portfolio companies across the globe.

LINE had also joined ZHD in another merger on March 1, 2021.

Southeast Asia is becoming an increasingly strategic region for global investors. As of 2020, there are 61 VC funds in the market to raise capital for the region, of which 49 are by VCs headquartered in Singapore.

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Image Credit: Echelon Thailand, May 2017

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Will SEA become a dominant force in the digital currency space?; A survey reveals two ASEAN countries rank second and third among countries with the highest rates of cryptocurrency adoption; These are Vietnam and the Philippines, which have 21% and 20% of their respective populations saying that they have used or owned digital assets in the past year. More here

The SEA fintech ecosystem sees a flood of investments this new year; Mynt’s US$1bn funding announcement is one of 15 listed in the region in January; Other funding announcements include Singapore’s Lendela, Pintek and Alami from Indonesia, Malaysia’s microLEAP, GPay, and Momo from Vietnam, collectively garnering investments over US$50mn. More here

Singapore faces talent crunch for engineering and product manager roles: Report; Salary differences for senior roles relative to junior roles were the highest in Vietnam for both tech and non-tech talent compared to Singapore and Indonesia; The report was jointly done by Monk’s Hill Ventures and Glints. More here

B Capital launches US$415mn fund; to expand investment activity in India, Indonesia; Named Elevate, the new fund will provide follow-on capital to high-performing, later-stage companies in B Capital’s portfolio; The VC firm also said will formally launch in China; The Chinese unit will be based in HK. More here

AirAsia to launch ride-hailing services in Malaysia; This move comes after it launched a food delivery service in Singapore; Understanding the potential comparison with existing ride-hailing giants such as Grab, CEO Tony Fernandes says AirAsia can become successful in this sector even with the heavy competition, citing history where the company managed to raise funding quicker than any other airline company. More here

A startup within an MNC: How Thales Digital Factory spins a new take on corporate innovation; The factory has developed a solution called DIVA (distributed intelligent video analytics), which leverages existing CCTV cameras to enable effective crowd management at train stations and onboard trains. More here

YJ Capital, LINE Ventures merge to form a new US$271M fund; Z Venture Capital Corporation invest in startups across Japan, Southeast Asia, South Korea, the US and China; For global investments, ZVC will adopt a sector-agnostic approach but with a strategic focus on sectors like consumer internet, e-commerce, fintech and O2O. More here

Ajaib, which aims to be the ‘Robinhood of Indonesia’, bags US$65mn Series A from Ribbit Capital; This comes after the investment platform raised US$25mn in a Series A round led by Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures; Ajaib claims to have processed 10mn+ transactions in the last four months and has over 1mn monthly users on its platform. More here

Endowus snags US$17mn Series A to grow its investment platform regionally; Investors include Lightspeed and Softbank Ventures Asia; Singapore-based Endowus offers retail, accredited, and institutional investors a platform to invest cash, CPF and SRS savings. More here

Blockchain firm Ripple buys 40% stake in Malaysia’s Tranglo; Ripple is a provider of enterprise blockchain solutions for global payments whereas Tranglo is a cross-border payments firm; The partnership will allow Ripple to expand the reach of on-demand liquidity, which uses the digital asset XRP to send money instantly and reduce working capital needs. More here

Dash Living secures US$8.8mn+ Series A; Backers include Grosvenor Asia Pacific, Gobi Partners, and Mindworks; Dash provides serviced living and co-living spaces in HK and Singapore; It plans to launch in Japan and Australia and expand its asset-light management model for long-stay and SaaS for landlords. More here

Singaporean firm specialising in supply-chain risk management Nimbly raises US$4.6mn pre-Series A; Investors are Insignia Ventures (lead), Sovereign Capital and Saison Capital; Nimbly enables companies to monitor and verify the implementation of SOPs in multiple locations, uncover data-driven operational insights and track issues until resolution. More here

Singapore’s fintech firm Tazapay lands US$1.75mn; It provides a digital payments platform for SMEs engaging in cross-border trade; Investors are Sequoia’s Surge, Saison Capital, RTP Global, and January Capital; The fintech firm also provides SMEs with fast, simple background checks on potential business partners. More here

Fundiin receives financing for its Vietnam-focused BNPL platform; Investors include 1982 Ventures and Zone Startups Ventures; The funds will go towards bankrolling market expansion plans as the startup seeks to serve a “growing waitlist of merchants and their customers.” More here

Vietnam launches first autonomous vehicle; Manufactured by local conglomerate Phenikaa Group, the self-driving vehicle boasts AI features including 3D maps, Lidar sensors, simultaneous localisation and mapping technology, and incorporates machine and deep learning within its software. More here

Ex-Zilingo exec joins Singapore VC firm Smile Asia as chief strategy officer; Billy Naveed spent the last two years at Zilingo as head of strategy; Apart from managing the company’s US business, he helped its fintech unit and assisted with the acquisition of nCinga, a software-as-a-service business based in Sri Lanka. More here

This startup is elevating smart security through sound detection; Singapore-based startup SoundEye whose IoT solutions allow for emergency monitoring, home monitoring, and security surveillance; SoundEye’s solution employs edge computing – meaning the system selectively records sound anomalies in an environment as they happen. More here

Singapore fintech firms Stacs and Bluecell to transform green finance; They will partner to push for industry-wide adoption of blockchain-powered infra to support effective green and sustainability-linked loans; Bluecell, an aggregator of lenders, will connect its loans matching engine to Stacs’ blockchain-based sustainability-enabling tech infra, GreenStacs. More here

Successful subscription models are like a well-choreographed dance; Essentially, a subscription relationship is a continuous dance with your customer and the data is your instructor; There are several important steps to this dance — from attracting new customers, to retaining them, to renewing them — and perfecting those steps is no small feat. More here

Iceland fintech startup Meniga plans APAC growth; The digital banking solutions firm entered the Southeast Asian market in 2019, when it opened a new office location in Singapore; It has since successfully launched some of the most popular banking apps in the region, including for UOB. More here

Singapore trials solar-powered buses; The 1.6mm-thick panels will convert solar energy into electricity to charge the buses’ batteries; This reduces the load on the vehicle’s alternator, and in turn, saves fuel and reduces carbon emissions. More here

Mall Group eyes return to e-commerce; The Thai company will start afresh by launching two shopping websites — M Online and Gourmet Market Thailand — and also approach customers on other platforms such as social commerce and online marketplaces; Despite being behind other players in digital commerce, there is still an opportunity for growth for the company as the ratio of e-commerce to retail businesses in Thailand is still small. More here

Can fintech partnerships solve the challenges of micro and small businesses?; Simplified access to basic financial services can be a vital catalyst for small business owners to recover from the fallout of this pandemic; This is where fintechs can play a vital role by analysing alternative data-sources, building new credit-scoring models and expanding financial access without bias. More here

Indonesia’s next digital boom lies beyond metropolitan cities; E-commerce, digital payments and lending is poised for mass adoption in tier 2 & 3 cities and expected to grow 30-50% annually for the next five years; In particular, e-commerce GMV could hit US$45bn, five times that of 2020’s estimated US$9bn. More here

In Asia Pacific, SEA consumers are most receptive to challenger banks: Study; It polled 5K digital banking customers in ten key APAC markets to gain better insights on consumer preferences, interactions and engagements; Thailand scored the highest with 78% of respondents stating they were open to consider a fintech, followed by Vietnam with 77%, and Indonesia with 69%. More here

How Alibaba’s technology is changing the face of philanthropy; Teaching farmers how to promote their products with livestreaming, connecting engineers with welfare organisations in need of digital experts and using its platform to encourage users to “go green” are just some examples of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s philanthropic efforts. More here

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Photo by Harrison Kugler on Unsplash

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Conicle, a Thai edutech startup focused on providing learning solutions for corporates, has raised US$3 million in a Series A funding round.

Participating investors included InVent, the corporate VC arm of Intouch Holdings, besides 500TuksTuks, Stormbreaker Venture and Stundi.

The fresh funds will go towards bankrolling Conicle’s business growth plans, which includes being the local market leader for corporate learning solutions and overseas expansion.

Founded in 2014, Conical’s learning management platform help organisations enhance employee capabilities and efficiency. Its ConicleX offering is akin to a “cloud university” where employees can learn skills including business acumen, data analysis and personnel management.

The company shared it serves over 50 organisations and has more than one million users.

“At Conicle, we focus on developing new technologies and services that can educate people and simplify learning. This will improve personal capabilities and provide organizations with better tools and processes for people development. Learning is not limited to a physical campus but will become a lifelong activity,” said Nakorn Phuekphiphatmet, co-founder and CEO of Conicle.

Also Read: How edutech startups can accelerate active learning

“Because the body of knowledge is growing and new skills are required all the time, Conicle has developed a platform similar to an online university where people and organisations can learn throughout their lives. The design concept has been geared towards the redefinition of learning, not just e-learning or online courses, but the perception of learning as a combined process and tailored to different personal demands,” he further shared.

“The investment in Conicle is based on promising growth that follows changes in learning behaviour, and is in line with the conceptual framework of the companies in the group to focus on people development by upgrading education to enhance the nation’s competitiveness,” remarked Narongpon Boonsongpaisan, Head of InVent.

“Within the next three to five years, over 47 per cent of tasks will be undertaken by robots so about half the existing jobs will disappear. AI and robotics will be the base for a new wave of digital disruption. Inequality will widen, not to mention a wider gap in technological knowledge. Therefore, reskilling is an urgent issue,” said Krating Poonpol, Managing Partner of 500 TukTuks and founder of StormBreaker Venture.

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Image Credit: Conicle

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Undertaking large-scale farming is near to impossible in a country like Singapore with a land area of just 724.2 square kilometres (279.6 square metres).

According to Singapore Food Agency, only two square kilometres of the country’s land is available for farming, which is much lesser when compared with Malaysia, which uses more than 11 times the land for farming. This explains why over 90 per cent of the food items in the island nation is imported.

Despite the active measures taken by the Singapore government to transform the agriculture sector, local farmers often whine that highly nutritious items like root vegetables, fruits, herbs, goat milk and frog meat aren’t getting adequate support.

But this issue is just the tip of the iceberg — when the environmental implications of conventional farming methods are taken into account.

In general, traditional farming methods are the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Coupled with the rising population, farmers often heavily rely on nitrogen-based fertilisers to increase the yield, which inadvertently leads to nitrous oxide emissions, which further exacerbates climate change.

To take this problem head-on, Benjamin Swan started an agritech company in Singapore six years ago, which relies on a more efficient and sustainable way of farming. 

The green stop

As offbeat as it may sound, the idea for a vertical farm occurred to the Australian when he couldn’t find fresh salads in Singapore’s grocery stores.

“When I first moved here from Australia over 12 years ago, I was frustrated that it was so difficult to get good produce here,” he told e27 in an interview.

But he knew that the problem did not lie with distributors or farmers because, by the time the produce is flown to Singapore from different countries, the greens are already wilting in the bag.

“The other thing that frustrated me was the food waste that would accumulate at the bottom of the bag if I didn’t eat the greens within 12 hours,” he said.

Also Read:  How Fefifo aims to make farming cool again for the younger generation

But funnily enough, it was a Facebook post that brought in the real motivation for Swan to go deeper into vertical farming. 

“When I read a Facebook article about vertical farming, I thought to myself, ‘hey, this is cool and I can grow myself a great salad at home’,” he said.

To gain more knowledge of the industry, Swan travelled to different countries and met experts in traditional farming. As he gained more knowledge, he realised that traditional farming is harmful to the environment.

This is when he started testing out by growing plants indoors while still holding on to his full-time job as an engineer.

Initially, he began to grow kale in the basement of a swimming pool at over 42 degrees, which was hitherto unheard of, as the item generally grows at a temperature of 18 to 20 degrees.

After 18 months of heavy research, he, along with his co-founder Martin Lavoo, launched Sustenir Group, a vertical farm that sells its products in stores like Redmart and Cold Storage.

How it works

Sustenir Group uses methods like controlled environment agriculture (CEA), vertical farming and hydroponics to grow 52 varieties of microgreens, along with plants like strawberries, kale, lettuce and spinach.

The indoor farming facility has sensors operating 24 hours to provide the company with data on the health and status of all its plants. The parameters used include humidity, temperature, and light. 

After receiving data from the sensors, its system adjusts the environment for each plant accordingly.

While the majority of farmers use pesticides to manipulate the physical appearances of fruits and vegetables, Sustenir Group doesn’t use any.

“We use zero pesticides. Our produce is 100 per cent clean, meaning they go beyond organic. As we know, organic products still use pesticides, albeit lesser harmful ones. Not only do we use zero pesticides, but we also make sure haze/pollution doesn’t come to the room,” Swan said.

Since Sustenir uses no chemicals, Swan claims its vegetables and fruits are not only more nutritious but also taste better — with customers coming back in surprise, seeking where he gets the vegetables from because their children enjoy the vegetables very much.

Also Read: Tunas Farm raises pre-seed funding from Gayo Capital to launch its urban farming technology

While traditional farming is a highly laborious occupation with hours spent toiling under the parched sun, the farming experience for employees at Sustenir is far different.

“Instead of someone working day and night, what happens is that everything inside the indoor farm is pre-scheduled. So we know when a plant needs to move and be harvested because we can control exactly how much solar radiation goes to the plant. It is all pre-planned,” he explained.

“It’s not like outdoor farms where you might have too much cloud coverage this month. So we have to leave the plants in for another couple of days. Everything is planned and scheduled. It’s all within our stride,” he remarked.

The future plans

In the future, Sustenir Group plans on leveraging both indoor and outdoor farming methods.

“As of now, it’s not possible to grow products like bok choy on an indoor farm. That’s why it is necessary for us to still leverage outdoor technology and improve it somewhat, so we can become more efficient with our products that are going out on land. Because the reality with indoor farming is that we can only grow limited products here,” he said.

Last year, Sustenir expanded into Hong Kong and Malaysia.

“We have just got the third market under our belt with big ambitions to build across Southeast Asia and North Asia in the coming years,” he said.

Although Sustenir’s farm is cash-flow positive, Swan said that the company is more focused on growth rather than profits.

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Image Credit: Sustenir Group

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Companies that have been listening to their customers on social media and other online channels might notice that people are less likely to trust brands that speak only about their products or services. Modern marketing is not about brands but people. A human focus becomes key.

Therefore, a marketing story must deploy not around the product itself but around the people whom it targets and who have created it. Human connections matter more than ever. 

Many companies struggle to tell good stories and build meaningful connections with consumers. To tell a story is not much of a challenge. To tell a great story is the art you must master well to make an impact.

After assisting many companies in the US and the Asia Pacific in marketing storytelling, I understood one key thing – great stories are only told by brands that do care about the people they create their products for. The common good must be a basis. Otherwise, the story will lack a “soul” and cannot make an influence. 

We need more stories reflective of existing economic, social, and environmental problems, providing solutions to them and reminding us of the values that remain important through the decades and even millenniums. 

Understand people you’re targeting

Exploring the target consumer’s lifestyle, preferences, and interests is key for marketing storytelling. Whether you’re telling a brand story in an animated video, article, presentation, or any other content type, it should be able to interact with the listener, intrigue them, make them involved.

How to achieve that? The intrigue commonly starts with a minimalist hint at something that matters to your audience. Are you sure that you know what it is?

Many brands may run marketing without having content persona research completed. I highly recommend creating a content persona that is similar to a traditional customer persona but is rather content-oriented than sales-oriented.

Also Read: 10 lessons on building a great team  by a marketing employee

It includes information about the consumer’s demographics, occupation, marital status, interests, daily struggles, lifestyles, types of content they usually consume, the social networks where they are the most active, favourite reading, topics, etc. It will help you better understand the people that your brand targets and create a story that resonates with them.

It’s the core value that matters

In these times, purchasing decisions are mainly based on trust and value. Although customers are more price-sensitive amid the Coronavirus recession, they prefer brands that bring a sustainable mission rather than those offering cheaper products/services. COVID-19 has brought suffering to many people, but it also has given us the necessary time to think of what’s really important.

Modern society has experienced massive re-estimation of personal values. Businesses should be too. Formulate your brand’s new values and clearly communicate them in your story. Let consumers know that you, as a brand, care about the same things as they do and that you both speak the same language.

Be authentic, honest and simple

We already have so many copies in the markets and in the crowds. Creating the new ones is not an option, be unique. Be honest and speak boldly about what your brand stands for and how your business solution can help accomplish that. Be honest about current problems that your audience might face in daily life. Be honest about your product.

If you’re a young brand, your product is still rough and imperfect, but it constantly evolves to become the ideal solution for people – don’t be afraid to say it. Let consumers know that you’re honest with them and that your brand is working to make their lives easier and enjoyable.

The marketing magic happens when the story is true and tells about the customer problem solution in the context of the brand’s bigger mission and common social values. 

Also Read: Making offline marketing cool again: How this AI startup is changing the future of B2C advertising

Clearly articulate your brand messaging

Make your message as simple and clear as possible. Approach consumers with a language that they can understand easily and that are close to them. If your target audience uses specific professional slang, you can use it too in order to transfer the idea better.

Also, you can use examples from their daily lives and depict situations that reflect their reality. Moreover, every brand has its unique messaging style and mottos. It’s important to articulate them right to be able to express the brand’s mood, style, and vibe.   

Find the right people to tell your story

As mentioned above, a good story is about the people. But I haven’t yet mentioned those who tell the story, and they also matter a lot. Under the storytellers, I mean content marketers who shape a brand message, voiceover artists, and even video production companies that your company partner with. They all contribute to the brand story creation.

While it refers not only to marketing but to every area, my piece of advice would be to collaborate with people with the same values. Sometimes, it matters even more than the years of professional expertise.

It helps set your collaboration like clockwork and co-create something great. And, of course, it allows telling a better brand story if you’re working on it altogether.  

Make sure you believe in the story that you tell

This tip had to be the first, actually. Make sure you believe in the brand and the product that you’re telling about in your story. Be aware of all benefits, advantages and goodies it delivers to customers. Be sure you understand its essence and value well.

Without believing in the product, good storytelling becomes impossible. However, it’s just a little objective opinion lost in the ocean of stories: good, bad and life-changing.

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Fundiin, a Vietnamese ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) service provider, has raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round co-led by 1982 Ventures and Zone Startups Ventures.

As part of the deal, Scott Krivokopich, Managing Partner at 1982 Ventures, has joined Fundiin’s board

The fresh funds will go towards bankrolling market expansion plans as the BNPL startup seeks to serve a “growing waitlist of merchants and their customers.”

Launched in 2019 by Nguyen Anh Cuong (CEO) and Vo Hoang Nam (CTO), Fundiin rides on the growing BNPL trend within Southeast Asia, where consumers only pay a third of the purchase price upfront, with the balance being automatically deducted interest-free over the next two months.

Cuong launched Fundiin after seeing that consumers were left with few viable options to pay for goods and services. According to him, the market is filled with predatory loans and complicated instalment products that often come with long wait times, hidden fees and high interest rates.

Also Read: How hoolah aims to tackle the misconceptions of Buy Now Pay Later

“We offer an interest-free instalment payment plan to consumers, instantly at point of sale with a single photo of ID card, making our model fundamentally better than credit cards. This facility helps retail merchants increase conversion, average order value, and reach new customers,” he shared.

“We co-led this financing round because we bought into Cuong’s vision of Fundiin, and have seen him adapt the model and gain traction through a difficult 2020, he has demonstrated the ability to lead a team and scale the business,” said Matt Saunders, Managing Partner at Zone Startups Ventures.

“Cuong and Nam have a bias for execution, taking an early lead in Vietnam’s buy-now, pay-later space by partnering with strong brands and focusing on customer experience. We have seen foreign competitors from Indonesia and Singapore take a shot at Vietnam, only to miss the mark and pull back. Fundiin is proving that being close to the market is a huge advantage,” opined Krivokopich.

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Image Credit: Fundiin

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Corporate innovation is the latest buzzword for large enterprises today.

Seeking to take a leaf out of the playbook behind the rise of tech giants such as Apple and Microsoft, multinational companies (MNCs) are looking to embed lean startup methodologies into their businesses.

Besides the buzzwords of “agile”, “sprints” and “MVPs”, what actually goes on behind the scenes of how multinational companies approach corporate innovation?

e27 had the opportunity to visit the Thales Digital Factory in Singapore. Conceptualised in 2018 to accelerate innovation and digital transformation for the French transportation giant and its customers in Asia Pacific, the Singapore branch is one of three digital factories worldwide, with the other two situated in Paris and Montreal.

Based out of a WeWork co-working space and adorned with project whiteboards, I could have easily mistaken it for an early-stage startup if not for the logo on its entrance.

Welcomed by Simon Mussard, Head of Thales Digital Factory Singapore, we were introduced to the latest project that the team was working on. Termed DIVA (distributed intelligent video analytics), the solution leverages existing CCTV cameras to enable effective crowd management at train stations and onboard trains.

Passenger density is calculated in real time using video analytics, with this data being used to show the occupancy levels of approaching trains.

Meanwhile, heat maps of stations and trains can be used by station managers in the operations control centre to monitor passenger movements across the entire system.

Video analytics can also be used for many other transportation use cases, among them are the detection of unattended luggage and trespassing on platforms and whether there are still passengers on board when the train reaches the end of the line. The system is currently in trial with local transit provider SBS Transit.

We spoke to Mussard to learn more about the Digital Factory and its future projects.

Below are the edited excerpts of the interview:

What do you do at the Digital Factory? How is a typical day at the Digital Factory like?

The mission of the Digital Factory is to accelerate the digital transformation of Thales and our customers. To do so, we focus on four pillars:

• Build and operate the Thales Digital Platform, a cloud-based environment to host our digital products securely and efficiently.
• Develop new digital solutions following the MVP process. These solutions can be for internal purpose or can be new products for our customers.
• Collaborate with the startup ecosystem through incubation and acceleration programs.
• Set up a Digital Academy to support the skills and practices transformation of our colleagues.

Our employees work in small agile squads, gathering from five to eight profiles, with all the skills required to build and operate our digital products.

Also Read: foodpanda CTO: Why autonomy is important for developing agile tech teams

We build our culture upon the values of empowerment and transparency. Our squads are encouraged to define and improve their own agile ceremonies and techniques to deliver great solutions to our customers.

How many people are employed at Thales Digital Factory Singapore? What are the main roles?

Out of the 200 “Factorians” in our global digital factories network (with Paris and Montreal sites), 20 are based in Singapore. We bring together all the roles and skills needed to build and operate our products: user-experience designers, product owners, full-stack developers, DevOps engineers, scrum masters, data scientists and engineers.

How does Thales decide which projects are taken up by the Digital Factory? Are there some requisites/specific details that the company follows?

There are two main questions we consider when selecting a project for the Digital Factory: 1) is the Digital Factory the right organisation to develop this product, and 2) is this a product we should invest in as a group?

For the former, our Digital Factory organisation and skills are optimised to develop digital products based on cloud technology using an iterative and agile methodology. Our user-centric approach, combined with our scrum and agile practices, allow us to design, test and adopt a new solution based on feedback from our customers and observable results.

This approach may not be best fitted for upstream technology research or a situation where our customers have already defined a clear list of specifications.

Also Read: ‘There’s no one-size-fits-all for corporate innovation, experimentation is key’: Sunway Group’s innovation chief

With regards to whether we should invest in the project as a group, we have defined and deployed our own selection framework inspired by the lean startup and design thinking methodologies. To keep it simple, we want to develop solutions that are desirable, feasible and viable.

On average, how long does it take to conceive an MVP and bring it to the trial stage?

On average, our MVPs are in production (exposed to and usable by early adopters) after three to six months of development, depending on the complexity of their components. Once in production, we continue updating and enriching the solution based on the users and customers feedbacks.

Besides the DIVA system and collaboration with SBS, are there other solutions developed in the Singapore Digital Factory that are currently in the market?

Our Singapore Digital Factory team is collaborating with all Thales businesses in Singapore and in the region to develop digital solutions.

As an example, the team, in collaboration with our colleagues in the rail signalling business, developed a digital tool called COMPASS that leverages Machine Learning algorithms to facilitate the test and commissioning of new systems.

This product was designed and developed in Singapore, leveraging our local activity and teams to tailor the user experience and algorithms to the actual needs of signalling engineers and public transport operators.

After a few months of development and local validation of our model, we have deployed COMPASS to other projects and is now part of the global portfolio of Thales’s ground transportation business line.

Can you share the details of any new solutions that you are working for Singapore or the region?

For confidentiality reasons, we are not able to disclose information on specific solutions that are currently being worked on for the region.

While the examples provided so far have been related to the ground transportation sector, our Singapore Digital Factory is industry-agnostic and supports all Thales businesses in the region to develop new digital solutions. These include the security and defence industries, aerospace and air traffic management and digital identity and security.

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Image Credit: Thales

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Amazon acquires Perpule to capture India’s kirana-tech market

The story: Global online commerce giant Amazon has acquired Indian retail tech startup Perpule.

The deal details: US$14.7 million in an all-cash deal. An additional US$5 million is expected to be paid to compensate Perpule’s employees.

The objective: With this deal, Amazon plans to capture India’s massive kirana tech (tiny stores in India distributed across every neighbourhood) market.

About Perpule: Founded in 2016, the startup helps small stores go from offline to online.

Its primary product is UltraPoS, a store management service that helps small businesses digitally manage and automate their inventory and purchase orders from distributors and billings.

“Perpule has built an innovative cloud-based POS offering that enables offline stores in India to better manage their inventory, checkout process, and overall customer experience,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Here are the 6 SEA startups vying for IPO in 2021

There are over 12 million kirana stores in India and companies like Jio, Paytm, and more are in a race to capture the market.

Remote consultation app HealthPlix raises US$13.5M

Investors: Lightspeed (lead), JSW Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and Chiratae Ventures.

What the funding will be used for: Expansion of its doctor base, hiring, and product enhancement.

About HealthPlix: Founded in 2014, India-based HealthPlix offers full-stack-services for doctors to deliver smooth remote consultations. Through its app, doctors can maintain patient records and offer remote consults to improve patient outcomes.

It primarily focuses on chronic diseases like endocrinology, diabetology, and cardiology.

The startup claims it serves more than 12 million unique patients in India.

“What sets HealthPlix apart is its doctor-first B2B approach. Doctors are the most influential decision-makers in healthcare. We believe whichever platform wins their trust will have the sole right to orchestrate the entire US$88 billion of healthcare spending,” said Vaibhav Agrawal, Partner at Lightspeed, and a former physician.

Singapore small businesses most resilient through the pandemic: Report

The story: According to CPA Australia’s survey, Singaporean businesses showed the highest resiliency in comparison to their Southeast Asian counterparts.

How the survey was done: The survey polled 4,227 small businesses in 11 Asia Pacific markets, including 307 respondents from Singapore.

More about the story:  In the survey, 55 per cent of Singapore’s small businesses said that the pandemic affected them adversely.

This was lower than 67 per cent in Malaysia, 81 per cent in Vietnam, and 68 per cent in Indonesia.

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Image Credit: Christian Wiediger

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